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March 15, 2007
Dr. Herbert A. Hauptman, Nobel Laureate and President, Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, 3-15-07
After more than 20 years with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., Herbert A. Hauptman, Ph.D, joined the staff of the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute in 1970 (then known as the Medical Foundation of Buffalo). In 1985, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Although he is a mathematician by training who has taken only one chemistry course in his life, he was able to use classical mathematics to resolve an issue that had stymied chemists for decades.
The structures of thousands of molecules have now been solved by crystallographers using Dr. Hauptman's direct methods, and many new molecular structures are added to the list each year. As a result of the information obtained in these studies, many new drugs have been designed. In honor of Dr. Hauptman’s work, as well as to honor the original donor who made the Institute a reality, the Medical Foundation of Buffalo was renamed the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute in 1994.
Dr. Hauptman's current work builds on his earlier Nobel-winning research. He and his colleagues at the Hauptman-Woodward Institute are presently working to extend the methods of structure determination to very large molecules of biological importance, including the proteins that are the targets for drug-design efforts. They have achieved new success in recent years by developing a procedure known as "Shake-and Bake" that has greatly extended the power of direct methods
The Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute (HWI) is an independent, not-for-profit, biomedical research facility located in the heart of downtown Buffalo's medical campus. For half a century, HWI scientists have been committed to improving human health through study, at a molecular level, of the causes and potential cures of many diseases. In contrast to clinical research, the focus of Hauptman-Woodward’s basic research is to determine the structures of individual substances such as proteins that play a role in the development of specific diseases. This research explores questions like the following: What is the three-dimensional shape of a particular protein molecule? How and with what does this protein interact? What controls these interactions? What structural alterations lead to the development of disease?
Working under the leadership of Nobel Laureate Herbert Hauptman, HWI scientists use the techniques of molecular biology, biochemistry, and crystallography to answer these questions. The results of their investigations provide the starting point for better drug design. In addition, other research on-going at HWI seeks to improve the methods of crystallization and data analysis used for molecular structure determination by scientists worldwide.
Posted by David Lemberg at March 15, 2007 08:36 AM Return to SCIENCE AND SOCIETY home page